{"id":73,"date":"2020-04-23T20:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T19:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress2\/index.php\/2020\/04\/23\/16-mama-sisera\/"},"modified":"2020-04-23T20:08:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T19:08:00","slug":"16-mama-sisera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/23\/16-mama-sisera\/","title":{"rendered":"16. Mama Sisera"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n16. Mama Sisera<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nSet me on fire like a torch in your hand.<\/span><\/div>\n

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\nI feel a familiar knot in the base of my belly as I read the end of Deborah’s song. It’s an old travelling companion that swells its crescendo then recedes for a moment. Anxiety. It’s so familiar that when I meet it in another it can feel like it belongs to me. I read the line again:<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThrough the window peered Sisera’s mother; behind the lattice she cried out. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nJudges 5:28<\/span><\/div>\n

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\nNot-knowing, guessing, wondering. No help from mobile data speeding an update from field to ear. No messenger on a horse appearing on the horizon. Mama Sisera has to wait for news of her boy, and it’s a waiting she knows well. His iron-chariot fame cost many lives, and cost his Mama a fair bit of sleep. Her servants fuss her, their words tripping and falling in a rush to comfort and console. They have no conviction. The sun moves slowly.<\/span><\/div>\n

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\nTime. I’m forty-five years old right now. That’s half of ninety and twenty-five away from three-score and ten. Time’s a strange thing. I remember my Grandma telling seventeen-year-old me she never stopped feeling eighteen. I looked through my, then, unwrinkled and unknowing eyes trying to imagine what she meant. Middle-age has gifted me a better understanding. <\/span><\/div>\n

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\nAround twelve centuries before Jesus allowed his body to be hung on a tree Deborah took her place under a tree to serve her people. Deborah held the office of Judge for almost sixty years. A long time. An unenviable position during the twenty that took place during a time of national hardship. Dispute solver, wisdom finder, peace bringer, conflict broker. A heavy burden. <\/span><\/div>\n

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\nSome centuries before she held court, her forefather Moses led his birth family out of slavery in Egypt. On the journey he felt the weight of the people’s complaining. His father-in-law suggested sharing the task of arbitration and Moses instituted a line of listeners with the authority to judge. In that line Deborah sat. She listened to people in their concerns and anxieties, and she listened to God to understand the times. Her words carried weight, this lady-judge, and when she summoned a man he came. God had told her this season of waiting, of loss and subjugation, was coming to an end. <\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe times they are a-changing. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nDylan<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI imagine she <\/span>sat<\/span> under the tree. Sixty years is a long time to stand. Sitting puts you in a defenceless position. In an anxious time, it indicates you operate under a different atmosphere. I’m struck by her repose.  I imagine her a little like Eyore the donkey but in reverse. He had the cloud, she had the blue sky. Her own weather system became the lens through which she viewed reality. She seemed to operate in authority born from intimacy and I’m intrigued. Intimacy that flowed into poetry and song-writing for the blessing of her people. <\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nJudges ch4 tells the tale. Deborah summons Barak. She calls him to lead an offensive against an enemy who had oppressed them for a long time. Barak balks at the prospect. I wonder if he had any battle experience in his manhood, given they had been under iron rule for decades. He says he won’t go without her, and her atmosphere, so she leaves her tree. Before she moves, she lets Barak know his agreement with anxiety would cost him. <\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe cost of unbelief, for Barak, was honour went to a woman when the battle was won. This side of the battle his concern was more whether he would come home alive. Many times we are told of the enemy\u2019s iron chariots and the scale of the oppression. Those iron chariots loomed larger in the imagination of the Israelites than the might of Yahweh who had rescued them before.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nWe are introduced to Deborah as: wife of Lappidoth. <\/span>Wife<\/span> and <\/span>woman<\/span> are interchangeable in the Hebrew language. <\/span>Lapidoth<\/span> can also mean flame or torch. So Deborah wife of Lapidoth could be translated:<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nDeborah. Woman of flame.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nSet me on fire God. A torch in your hand just like she was. <\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nAs the story continues, we learn that honour went to another woman of flame. Not Deborah, but a Kenite woman. One less impressed by iron chariots. Perhaps because she was from a travelling people who themselves worked closely with metals. The Kenites were long-time friends of the Israelites, woven into their line through Moses’ marriage to Zipporah. They shared a knowing of Yahweh that predated Jethro. In Deborah’s time, the Kenites had an alliance with Israel’s oppressor Jabin.  But for this woman the alliance with Yahweh still took precedence. <\/span><\/div>\n

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\nThe story goes like this. Iin Judges ch 4: Barak goes to fight. Deborah is there with her fire and her atmosphere, and the army of the commander-of-900-iron-chariots is defeated. Sisera, the commander himself, has run away. He makes it to the camp of his allies, the Kenites. Exhausted, he seeks sanctuary in the leader of the Kenite\u2019s tent.. The leader is absent, but his wife ushers Sisera in. She offers sustenance and rest. He asks for water; she gives him milk. In this exchange she rises and he, mighty man of iron, becomes child. He lies down and sleeps. This wife, Jael, acts swiftly to dispatch Sisera into a far deeper sleep. Hammer in hand, she drives a tent peg through his temple, and he is dead. <\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nIt’s the artistry of Judges ch5, Deborah’s song, that struck me in the waiting time of 2020. The song captures the composure of Deborah and Jael. They both lived under atmospheres that drew attention away from Yahweh. Atmospheres of fear, confusion, compromise. Somehow they exude composure and walk through the fog of their context with purpose and clarity. It’s worth reading the whole song in Judges ch5, reflecting on the way the different tribes responded to the rallying cry Deborah sent out.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe song ends and it\u2019s the image of Sisera’s mum in the window that lingers in my mind. Not because of the fear and anxiety. We all get scared and anxious from time to time. It’s not the waiting. We are all waiting right now. I just feel so sad hearing the empty consolation coming from those around her. So many words. Words that soothe and stroke. Words of air. Sisera is not dividing the women and the wealth. He is impaled on the floor of an ally. <\/span><\/div>\n

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\nThe passing of time will tell whether we walked through spring 2020 like Deborah, like Jael, or like Mama Sisera. Will we know what we were created to do? Will we do it regardless of the story others are telling? Will we seek counsel from those whose words are weightless as air? Are we a torch in His hand, bringing His warmth, His light wherever He carries us? <\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nIt was always the 3God\u2019s dream that the fire would pass from person to person. Across borders. Throughout Israel and Canaan and beyond. To those waiting in the window wondering if one they love is still alive. No one passed the torch to Mama Sisera. The flame of love meets us in our anxiety with a kiss and a promise of His presence always. A love that endures through every time. A love that sets us on fire and fills the house, drawing others to its warmth. Physical distance is no barrier to this flame. It passes just as swiftly through text and email, and the whispered prayers that rise before the throne. <\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nWe may live in an atmosphere that makes it hard to get the oxygen we need for the fire we carry. But like Deborah and like Jael, we can have our own weather system.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nYour old road is<\/span><\/div>\n
\nRapidly agin’.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nPlease get out of the new one<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIf you can’t lend your hand<\/span><\/div>\n
\nFor the times they are a-changin’.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nBob Dylan – the times they are a-changin’<\/span><\/div>\n
\n*wife\/woman of Lappidoth could also mean woman of torches\/flame<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16. Mama Sisera Set me on fire like a torch in your hand. I feel a familiar knot in the base of my belly as I read the end of Deborah’s song. It’s an old travelling companion that swells its crescendo then recedes for a moment. Anxiety. It’s so familiar that when I meet it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}